Pops Poppin’

My son is dairy-free, so when other kids hit the ice cream, he hits the popsicles. And as a family, we eschew artificial dyes and corn syrup fairly religiously, so even a good popsicle can be hard to find. Which is why he’s been adamant about regular attendance at the Wallingford Farmers Market: it’s the only place we’ve been able to find Seattle Pops popsicles.

No longer! As of last week, Seattle Pops’ retail store opened on 45th Street, and now their Strawberry Basil, Blackberry Ginger and (our simple favorite) Zesty Lime can be had Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 11 pm.

Don’t want to wander down the street licking drip off your fingers? No problem! Settle in at the picnic tables with umbrellas they’ve set up out front and enjoy your popsicles in style.

Iowagirl, I have thought of that also.a parklet in front of a small business can keep 2 cars (length) times 4 possible ( quick drop-ins) times 10 hours open per day from quick convenient parkign for use of the small business.80! Big number/? Ben, Marie/Marie of Roumania/Ballard might mention that good spelling is tantamount to being close to God. Bad spelling and even worse, typing mistakes create ire in many readers.

Ben

I’m an athest so I dont car about being close to god.

Ben

What is “parkign”?

cathy wonderful

a typo .. bad bad mistake of mine.

Donn

I don’t know about her, but I’ve never been. Visit Fainting Goat once in a while, they’re all right. Parklets naturally help the businesses that install them, it’s the rest that lose out.

Ben

Fainting Goat is better.

Donn

Kabul was decorated with a banner advertising home made ice cream, this afternoon. They weren’t open for business though, so I couldn’t assess the popularity of this new entrant in the Wallingford ice cream scene.

iowagirl

rarely,and if i go i walk

Ffej

Just looked at their website — the flavors are AMAZING.

A visit is definitely warranted. Thanks for the tip, Jordan!

iowagirl

Donn suggested a parklet helps the business that installed it. Perhaps. I am not sure it does help the business. I propose that if the parklet were not there, the business would be the same at Molly Moon’s. But it does hurt other businesses, for folks who would like to go to a nearby business, and see no parking, just move on. To Ben. Where is your data that parklets helps small businesses. MM parklet suddenly appeared, under the radar. Regarding the dumb parquet at MM, more people are sitting on the wall in front of the dentists office. There is room for very few folks on the dumb parklet. Which is taking 2/5 parking spaces for other small businesses. So there. Yes, I have gone to Molly Moon’s, but I prefer the Fainting Goat. I really would like to know the legal position of parklets now. Will we lose more parking places after one or more suddenly appears?

Ben

I don’t know about data from Seattle unfortunately. I have read interesting surveys from Philadelphia and San Francesco.

The small businesses in question have ot pay to create the parklets with their own money…so unless we know our business better than they do, it’s helping them (…or not, and they will either be capable of learning from it and changing course or at risk of going out of busness if they aren’t savvy enough to figure out when they are spending money to hurt their own business).

TJ

You are oversimplifying things, and intentionally understand the positives while intentionally overstate the positives. Yes, there are people who’d move on after not finding a parking space, but there are also people who’d move on if that for the parklet feature making Molly Moon more attractive. And that’d not just be a loss for Molly Moon, but a loss for nearby businesses also. If you follow the American shopping trend at all, you’d realize currently the hottest trend is to have businesses that can attract long lines plus better walkability. University Village is a model for that, and South Center Mall specifically worked hard to recruit the likes of 85C Cafe and Ding Tai Fung while expanding outdoor walking area. The idea is to have people spend a lot of time in the vicinity and walk around in an open out door area.

Shoppers who want to park conveniently are actually not good shoppers for a neighborhood. It’s not helping Wallingford businesses much if our shoppers just park at convenient parking lots at Ezell’s, CVS, or Wallgreen, rush in and out and leave. We want people to actually have to park at a small but not crazy distance, walk around a bit, and invest time in line for Molly Moon. That way they feel like they’ve already invested a lot of time and effort into this one trip, therefore they should walk around more just to make it “worth it”.

Half of the 45th already got a drive-through feel: people rushing to buy fast foods or fill up their prescriptions and go. That is NOT what’s good for the neighborhood, because we are not a highway truck stop. More easily available parking is only going to make it worse not better.

hayduke

“If you follow the American shopping trend at all, you’d realize currently the hottest trend is to have businesses that can attract long lines plus better walkability. University Village is a model for that, and South Center Mall specifically worked hard to recruit the likes of 85C Cafe and Ding Tai Fung while expanding outdoor walking areas.”

U-village is indeed nice and if I had to go to a mall, I’d rather go to an outdoor one like that than an indoor one any day.

But how do you suppose all those shoppers actually GET to U-Village and Southcenter?

TJ

Therefore I am all for tearing down some single-family houses on the edge of Wallingford commercial area to build some parking structures! You don’t want cars and parking at the core. You want them on the edge and people walk within the core. If parking to Ezell’s is three blocks away, instead of people driving off high way to get their chicken and then driving away, you got people walking in the commercial area and shop.

Ben

Anyone take enough time away from the great parklet debate to actualy check out the shop?

I used to not care for most of their flavors available at the farmer’s markets. That might also be the time I visited them the flavors I would be interested in were already out.

At the store, there are now more flavors available and many that I like, including the spicy mango one that taste like Mexican candy.

They don’t need the parklet, because the building already comes with a sizable outdoor area. Maybe that’s the replace for parklets. Let’s rebuild most of the 45th to have more space like that.

Wallyhood is dedicated to fostering community and communication in the Wallingford neighborhood. A group of volunteer editors rotate the responsibility of managing the site, and we welcome stories from all our neighbors.

This week’s editor is ​Jack McLaughlin. You can contact the editor-of-the-week at [email protected].

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